Too often, we take the status quo for granted and don’t challenge our assumptions about the world around us. This can lead to stagnation and a lack of innovation.
Category: Curiosity
3 surprising ways curiosity changes your brain
You are more engaged, active, and open-minded when you’re curious. But what is it about curiosity that makes it so powerful? In this issue, we explore the psychology of curiosity and three surprising ways it changes your brain.
Curiosity Boosts Memory
In a study published in 2014, researchers discovered a connection between memory and curiosity levels. Here are some of the key findings from the investigation by the University of California at Davis:
- When people are curious to learn the answer to a question, they are better at learning that information – not only in the very short term but also after a 24-hour delay.
- Most surprising, though, was participants had greater recall of unrelated, extraneous or incidental information present at the time.
- Scans revealed when people were more curious, brain activity rose in regions that transmit dopamine signals; in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with memory and regions related to reward.
Point number two helps me get a handle on the characteristic of being open-minded. We can remember more of our experiences when we are curious.
A little test you can do for this is to try and remember extraneous information connected to an enjoyable learning experience.
Risk and Reward
When faced with something new, our brain weighs the risks and rewards before deciding whether to engage.
This happens when you are scrolling and decide to open an article or photo. You made a similar micro-calculation when you saw the subject of this email. Is this worth my time?
Curiosity, the restless feeling of wanting to know more, tips the scales in favour of exploration.
The regions deep in your brain responsible for processing rewards and motivation are active when you become curious. The nucleus accumbens, the bilateral caudate nucleus, and the ventral tegmental area all fire up when we want to know more.
When we’re curious, our brain has decided the potential rewards outweigh the risks. And this instinctive risk/reward calculation drives us to explore the physical and mental world around us.
Designing provocations for learning is a great way to heighten curiosity, so your students don’t scroll by!
Curiosity Powers Our Motivation to Learn
When was the last time you discovered something new in a favourite topic? Experiences which challenge our knowledge increase curiosity and cause us to explore for longer.
Here’s a recent example I experienced.
Most of our understanding of effective teaching has shifted since I was a primary teacher. I am curious about this tweet about Adaptive Teaching vs Differentiation, which presents the following statement:
Having lower expectations for some groups, particularly by setting them different work, will result in pupils having different knowledge and worsens gaps.
Challenged? ✅ Curious? ✅ Motivated to find out more? ✅
All new learning challenges the schemas we use to organise knowledge and understanding. A study by researchers Bonawitz, Schijndel, Friel, and Schulz found children are more likely to remain curious in this challenged state.
An unpublished Duke University study also showed heightened curiosity, increased patience and made people more willing to wait to discover a solution. In contrast, less curious people were more impatient and wanted to jump straight to the answers.
More curiosity has the power to motivate us for longer and increase our patience for discovery.
⏭🎯 Your Next Steps
Commit to action and turn words into works
- Pay attention to the signals of your own curiosity and the positive impact it has on your learning.
- Don’t just tell people they need to be open minded. Use provocations and well designed questions to increase curiosity.
- Change the start of your next few lessons or workshops to optimise for curiosity.
🗣💬 Your Talking Points
Lead a team dialogue with these provocations
- Your challenge is to increase curiosity in your team. What do you need from me?
- What’s the best way to challenge long-held views?
- When was the last time you changed your mind?
10 Questions That Will Boost Learning, Discovery & Success
Explore cornerstone questions that will boost your teaching and learning, your project management and discovery, and ultimately your creative success.
If You’re The 1st Responder To New Ideas, You Have A Critical Job
You get a moment to choose.
Your decision influences the dynamic of talk and wonder, whether you like it or not.
The pocket-sized hidden curriculum encourages or dampens enthusiasm-worse still, it spirals into self-preservation.
Questions litter the learning space in the primary and early years, often strewn around quite randomly.
I was once asked, If a pea had a brain, how big would it be?
Mourn Those Precious Little Sparks
These precious sparks exist momentarily, but the impact of our response to questions has an extended half-life.
Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandisement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk. We need both. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement, the second can wilt if it is not cultivated.
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
How you react to ideas is comparable. Consider the response when new ideas or contributions are shared in your team. There is a fundamental similarity to this moment of micro-judgement.
I wonder how the tiny moments of judgement or encouragement shape the climate of our teams? My hunch is, over time, they shape our experience in a significant way.
Culture Is Key To Innovation Potential
The Australian software company Atlassian recently published results of a study into the health of teams with evidence from 1,500 team members outside of Atlassian in the US and Australia. They found that 88% of participants are operating in an ‘unhealthy’ environment.
56 percent feel their team is poorly connected on a personal level, and 37 percent feel like they can’t try new things or express themselves fully.
This is the outcome of the block we started to explore, the micro-judgement of new ideas (or questions).
I wonder why 37 percent of participants can’t express themselves fully? The reasons for holding back might be:
- fear of being penalised unnecessarily
- perceived lack of impact or influence
- worries about how their manager will respond
- fear of not looking like a team player (they don’t want to appear different)
The Hidden Curriculum of Your Teams
I’ve seen this happen many times. A team member shares something new, and others require an immediate response in the group. Someone questions it confidently (because decades of experience tell them it’s not worth exploring), and the others on the team nod (because they’re too afraid to be the first one out). The new idea is squashed.
It takes more courage to applaud someone who shares new ideas than put them down.
What does this do, though, in the long term? If we belittle, shoot down or diminish new ideas or people who present them, the person might learn that it’s not safe to share in this environment.
In our study, members of healthy teams noted feeling a sense of belonging and support for new ideas. This creates an environment of high engagement, which, in turn, serves as a buffer against burnout and fuels even higher performance.
The first responder to questions or new ideas sets the tone.
Your Talking Points
A few weeks ago, I shared the mental model of compounding in issue 237.
Unnecessary negative micro-judgement of new ideas compounds, the result is unhealthy teams — an example of how compounding works even for negative behaviours.
Your challenge is to notice the first responder and reflect on what behaviours and responses are your standard.
Some of the report’s takeaways direct leaders to focus on encouraging ideas and are worth discussing with your colleagues. Let me draw your attention to these below:
- Carve out time to explore new ideas, both individually and as a team.
- Make space for calculated risks and incorporate the lessons you learn.
- Elevate the importance of diverse viewpoints and make space for respectful dissent.
You can read the complete set of recommendations here from the State of Teams Report 2021 — Work Life by Atlassian.
My weekly email helps educators and innovation leaders enhance their practice by sharing provocations, ideas and mental models. Join today, and get your copy this week.
My EDtalk Interview from ULearn14
During my trip to New Zealand last October I was contributing some sessions on design thinking for learning to the impressive ULearn conference in Rotorua. Strangely it was the first time I had spent any time in New Zealand running workshops or working with teachers.
It was a memorable week for lots of reasons and the following film was crafted for Core Education‘s Edtalks, in which I outline some ideas around design thinking for learning in our schools.
Tom Barrett from EDtalks on Vimeo.
Tom Barrett of NoTosh in Australia believes there is a place in schools for rigorous creative processes that are built on a similar set of values in the pedagogy we use. He explains Design Thinking, which allows learners to engage with an approach based on curiosity and creativity, and to have an impact on the world around them.
Tom talks about the way technology can speed up “the finding out” – the move from unknown to known, and he challenges teachers to find ways to protract the uncertainty. If children can “stay in the question” for longer, we will allow the inquiry and creative process to begin.
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I hope you enjoy the little snippet of my actual voice and not just my writing voice – feel free to drop a comment below if you have any questions about what I share. If you are interested in learning more about my work with schools on design thinking for learning you can also check out NoTosh.